I suppose it is time for me to re-visit the expression ‘AI’ (‘Artificial Intelligence’).
It is back on the agenda with all the current debate about how safe AI might be for human beings and human society.
One computer whizz actually stirred a small storm of controversy when he said AI might kill us all.
Hence, some governments are saying there need to be ‘guardrails’ hedging in AI, while Donald Trump is dead set against any such regulation.
All of which means it is time for me to go back to exposing the real meaning of the source expression ‘Artificial Intelligence.’
And they key (as I have pointed out in the past) is to be found not in the noun but in its qualifying adjective.
In other words, it is the adjective ‘artificial’ that tells us what AI really is.
It is not ‘intelligence’ it is ‘artificial intelligence.’
The relationship between intelligence and AI is the same as the relationship between artificial flowers and real flowers.
On the one hand you have real flowers which are organic, growing, and living, and reproducing—on the other hand you have a manufactured, contrived, imitation of real flowers.
In exactly the same way, you have on one hand real intelligence that organic, living, growing and reproducing—on the other hand you have a manufactured, contrived imitation of real intelligence.
The proper technical name for the computer function we call ‘AI’ is actually ‘Large Language Computing.’
And because it is very powerful very fast, very complex, calculating that uses a large corpus of human language it succeeds in imitating the appearance of real (human) intelligence—without (in reality) being any more real than artificial flowers.
Does that help in understanding what we’re dealing with here?
For Perth readers -- today I will talk words and language with Tod Johnston on 6PR on 'The Long Lunch' (at around 12:20pm).
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BY THE WAY...
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